Read the research behind this score →
How the Inbox Chaos Score works
The Inbox Chaos Score is a Tidy Haus self-assessment. It takes your own answers and shows two separate things: how much friction is in your inbox (a score from 0 to 100), and roughly how much time that friction costs you in a year. Neither number is a diagnosis, and nothing you enter is stored or shared.
What goes into the score. Nine questions, eight of them scored. Each scored answer carries 0 to 10 points depending on how much friction it describes. Add them up and divide by 80, and you have your score out of 100. The last question — what would matter most if your inbox were fixed — is not scored. It chooses the suggestion you get at the end.
| Band | What it means |
|---|---|
| 0–24 | Inbox is under control |
| 25–49 | Inbox friction is building |
| 50–74 | Inbox needs a reset |
| 75–100 | Inbox chaos is taking over |
| What you told us | Adds to the score | Adds time |
|---|---|---|
| Unread emails | Yes | No |
| Email accounts you keep up with | Yes | No |
| How long a search takes | Yes | Yes |
| How often you search | Yes | Yes |
| Distractions while searching | Yes | Yes |
| What happens when a search fails | Yes | No |
| Unwanted, solicitation and spam mail | Yes | No |
| Filters and focus features | Yes | No |
How the hours are worked out. Your own numbers only: the minutes it takes you to find one email (the middle of the range you picked) multiplied by how many times a week you search, plus 10 minutes back after each distraction, multiplied by 52 weeks. Reading and replying are not counted — only the hunting. The 10 minutes of recovery after a distraction is a Tidy Haus planning assumption, not a study figure.
What the research supports. Four studies stand behind the pattern the score measures. None of them converts your answers into personal hours, and we say so here rather than implying a precision we don't have.
- Mark, Iqbal, Czerwinski, Johns, Sano & Lutchyn, Email Duration, Batching and Self-interruption, CHI 2016 — forty information workers tracked over 12 workdays; more daily email time went with lower perceived productivity and higher measured stress. https://doi.org/10.1145/2858036.2858262
- Kushlev & Dunn, Checking Email Less Frequently Reduces Stress, Computers in Human Behavior, 2015 — checking less often lowered stress; it measured stress, not time. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2014.11.005
- Whittaker & Sidner, Email Overload: Exploring Personal Information Management of Email, CHI 1996 — the original account of overload and how people cope; mail volumes are far larger now. https://doi.org/10.1145/238386.238530
- Soucek & Moser, Coping with Information Overload in Email Communication, Computers in Human Behavior, 2010 — overload coping and its effects. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2010.04.024
What happens with your answers. Nothing is stored or shared. Your results come straight to your inbox with your full breakdown and a $50 credit, code CLUTTER50, which takes $50 off your first two hours — the $280 two-hour start — when your proposal arrives. Book a free discovery call and we'll tell you honestly whether Tidy Haus is the right help.